


In a Crowd of Thousands

by whitenoisce



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Character Death, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, M/M, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 10:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10989120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitenoisce/pseuds/whitenoisce
Summary: 1600 Sekigahara.1914 St. Petersburg.2016 Sochi.Viktor and Yuuri will find each other time and time again.





	In a Crowd of Thousands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri and Viktor meet for the first time in a world that had no place for them.

Yuuri lay awake in his cot unable to fall asleep. 

 

The cicadas were unusually loud tonight, chirping their song as if they knew it would be the last one they sing. If Yuuri closed his eyes really tight and imagined hard enough, he could almost hear words to the melody telling him to leave. Leave now and never turn back. 

 

It was easy enough, but incredibly stupid. The trek home would be a fortnight’s journey, and if he left now he’d have at least a full day’s head start before they start hunting him down. He let his mind wander to life in his seaside hometown where the permeating smell of sulfur clung to the wooden panels of the onsen, his family would offer sake and lodging to some guests, and shortly after dinner Hasetsu would sleep until the first daybreak and everything would happen again on routine. 

 

Five years was a long time to be away from home, and as the days passed it was getting harder and harder to remember tiny details from his happy life away from war. How old would Vicchan have been this year? How many blocks did it take to get from the onsen to the lake? What did mom’s katsudon even smell like anymore? Yuuri thought to himself as he sat up from the itchy confines of his ration blanket.

 

It took a long while but it was there. First was the entangling of the egg, the peas, and the steam of freshly cooked rice. From there, he heard the crunch of fried panko on the pork cutlet and that was all it took for everything to come crashing down. Vicchan would be nine years old this year and it took about 15 minutes and three blocks to get from his house to where the lake froze over in November. Mari nee-chan would be twenty and nine when the leaves start falling and Yuuko would have married in the time he was away. 

 

Remembering all the little bits and pieces of his old life that he thought had disappeared in the constant sound of swords slashing air and bloodshed was almost enough for him to pack what little he had and jump on the nearest steed going north. Away from where east and west converged, away from war. Instead, he rose and left the small tent to see ominous white flags overhead flapping in the soft breeze. _Right, this is my life now._  

 

Besides, in the slim chance that he manages to get away uncaught and unscathed before the sun went up, he wouldn’t have enough food or water to last him the entire trip. He’d be half dead from starvation before Ishida’s army caught up to him. And no matter the end result, his family back home would certainly be shunned from all the dishonor of a coward son. 

 

It was dark out, and while Yuuri’s eyes have yet to fully adjust to such bleak darkness, the red flags from across the field fluttered so elegantly as if they’d already won. It didn’t matter much to Yuuri, to him it was a losing battle from day one. To be honest, none of Yuuri’s fellow unit members really knew how they got this far with a reckless leader such as Ishida. The man was a jerk at best, and he wasn’t even a soldier to begin with. He’s made many enemies by not keeping up his side of whatever bargain is at hand, and it caused the troop a few thousand corpses en route to Sekigahara where they now stand with what could be the biggest military disadvantage in the history of Japan. 

 

* * *

 

“I swear I did not sign up for this shit,” Yuuri remembers Phichit throwing a whispered fit to him after they were tasked to list down the names of seventy something fallen samurai a couple of months ago.

 

“Here we are, thirty thousand men short of what’s considered the least bit decent, not halfway through the journey, and these bumbling fools decide to die from a fucking mosquito bite,” Phichit sounded off, angry at their ill fate.  

 

Yuuri remembers telling Phichit to keep his voice down lest any of these corpses suddenly arise from all the noise. He was trying to see if this frail looking body on the cot was anyone he knew, when Phichit suddenly stood ramrod straight from whence he was crouching and hissed, “Yuuri! Get up!” 

 

Before Yuuri could crane his head, someone had already spoken. 

 

“Who did this?” 

 

It was clean and cold, but powerful. Is this what gods sounded like? Yuuri thought for a moment before his eyes widened at the realization that he was still on the floor and he was about as good as dead by the time he showed his respects. He had half the brain to stand up as fast as he can to try to appease his superior, but one look was all it took for Yuuri to lose what was left of his brain, because in front of him was Viktor Nikiforov _in the flesh_. 

 

They only ever saw the ethereal silver haired man from atop hills on clear days, overlooking the rest of the squadron. He was Ishida’s few remaining allies, and about half of the whole samurai army was under the direct orders of the foreign ally generals. Rumor has it that he was actually a holy apparition only appearing every now and then to ensure the whole army hasn’t completely fucked themselves over yet, but no one has any concrete proof except for the fact that his beauty was beyond unreal. 

 

The man was dressed in a dark blue kimono with hand-painted waves that started where his long silver locks ended at his waist. Yuuri remembers thinking that it brought out such a beautiful shade of his aquamarine eyes before he realized that those eyes were looking at him and he was looking right back and _what the hell is happening???_

 

Phichit emerged from behind him, saving him from further embarrassment. “The mosquitos, sir,” he said. “It seems that the stagnant lake nearby was infested long before we have settled. These soldiers have fallen within the last week.” 

 

Yuuri snickered in his head at how solemn Phichit had sounded when just minutes ago he was hissing about how the corpses were ‘bumbling fools’. 

 

Viktor tilted his head slightly before he gave a sad smile at Phichit’s report. “Yes, I understand. But I wanted to know, who did this?” 

 

The exact same question, but this time his hand hovered over the bandage work on the frail young boy Yuuri was examining just moments ago. His stomach had been severely wounded in a small battle before contracting what Yuuri guessed was malaria from the lake. The sword must have been dipped in acid for the gash wouldn’t close. It burned off any possibility of cell recovery in the wound, and he knew that the poor soldier was a dead man walking at the first signs of the epidemic. 

 

In hindsight, Yuuri really should have skipped the boy and saved what little bandages they had left for a rainy day. But the fiery red bits of his hair that grew like mushrooms on his blond head showed that this kid had the fight in him. It was in his eyes too, he wanted to make his family proud, and Yuuri sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. 

 

“The dressing, sir?” Phichit asked as he tilted his head in confusion. 

 

“Yes. Who treated this boy?” Viktor said as he started gently poking the exposed skin around the bandage work. 

 

Yuuri froze in his spot. It was him, he was often on medical duty because the generals thought knowing how to fold fitted sheets from his time in the onsen was as good as knowing how to dress a wound. 

 

“It was me,” Yuuri willed his tongue to work and managed to squeak out a response after an eternity. When no one spoke, he looked up to see Phichit staring wide-eyed at him. “S-sir. It was me, _sir,_ ” he hastily added. Why was nothing going well for him today? 

 

Yuuri looked forward to sneak a peek at Viktor, but was surprised to see that he seems to not have noticed the lack of honorific, and was staring intently at the boy’s dressing still. 

 

“It’s not that,” Viktor’s eyes finally fell upon Yuuri’s. His gaze was purposeful, as if there was a particular answer he wanted to hear. “Didn’t you know this boy was as good as dead as soon as he contracted the disease?” 

 

Yuuri knew he had it coming. He should have listened to his brain and saved the bandages for people who needed it more. What if they were on their last boxes of medical supplies? Now the foreign general has found out and he was definitely going to get punished by walking the rest of the route on foot. _God, Yuuri you can be really stupid sometimes._

 

“Yes, sir. My deepest apologies for my incorrect judgment. I had hoped the boy would survive despite the festering and the epidemic.”

 

Well, this is my life now. Yuuri said to himself as he dropped on his knees for the best dogeza he could muster. If he does this well enough maybe my family wouldn’t bear the dishonor.

 

“I will take any punishment for my incom-” 

 

Before Yuuri had finished his sentence, he was already being hauled back up by Viktor Nikiforov himself. “There will be none of that nonsense,” he said as Yuuri stood straight with the biggest set of eyes he has ever seen in his life. Behind him was Phichit, equally wide-eyed, feeling as if maybe he was intruding into something that he wasn’t supposed to be witnessing. 

 

“W-what?” Yuuri didn’t know what has happening. He should have been halfway to hell by now, why was he still here?

 

“Could he have survived?” Viktor asked, eyes stern and searching for answers. “Is there _any_ way he could have survived?” 

 

Yuuri spluttered, tilting his head in confusion before managing a half decent response. 

 

“A really slim chance, yes. If he hadn’t fallen ill, and if the wound was redressed every four hours and had little to no contact with bacteria, he might have survived. But …”

 

“But what?” Viktor egged on. Yuuri bit his lip as he continued. 

 

“I’ve only ever seen one person try it. And he didn’t last more than a year, back in my hometown. The wound will never close, the gauze would have to act as disposable second skin.”

 

“And that’s what you did with this boy?”

 

“Tried,” Yuuri answered, before realizing his mistake again. “ _Sir._ ”

 

Viktor narrowed his eyes at Yuuri and asked, “What’s your name?” 

 

“What?” Yuuri blurted out again before he could stop himself. A holy apparition need not bother himself with names of lowly soldiers. He really must have heard wrong. 

 

Viktor took two and a half steps closer to where Yuuri stood and now, there was at most six inches between their faces. “Your name,” Viktor repeated, his eyes straining with a hint of desperation. “Please.”

 

If Yuuri’s eyes were deer in the headlights before, they were threatening to spill from their sockets now. What was happening? 

 

“Katsuki Yuuri.” 

 

Viktor’s eyes seem to have let up from its strain, and he was now standing upright with absolutely no trace of desperation at all. Yuuri wondered if he had just imagined everything that had transpired in the last five minutes, but what Viktor said soon after made him believe that perhaps things were as real as they get. 

 

“Katsuki Yuuri? Please expect to be excused from your unit later tonight. You will be escorted no later than an hour past sun down.”

 

Yuuri gaped at the man before him, no sound coming out of his mouth. 

 

“That is all, if you’ll excuse me,” Viktor said before he turned on his heel and proceeded to excuse himself out of the dingy makeshift tent. The bottom of his kimono fluttered as he left, and it made the ocean waves come to life. 

 

* * *

 

Yuuri smiled to himself at the memory, and like clockwork he heard faint footsteps approaching from the trail down from atop the hill. 

 

“Don’t tell me you expect to succeed at sneaking up on me,” Yuuri said without moving an inch from where he stood. 

 

“You can’t blame me for trying, Katsuki-san.” There was it again; clean, cold, and powerful. But this time around it had a hint of playfulness and adoration that Yuuri swore he’d die protecting. How he’d hoped he’d be the only one who ever got to hear him speak such tender words. 

 

“How many times have I told you to stop calling me that!” Yuuri hissed as he turned around, brows furrowing, to see Viktor with his index finger on his lips, turned up in a secret smile he only had with his guard down. 

 

“Alright, alright I’ll stop, Yuuri. Why are you so worked up about it tonight? Aren’t we supposed to celebrate? It’s the night before the battle.”

 

Viktor said as he walked the few steps separating him from Yuuri. He wrapped his arms around Yuuri’s torso, feeling the man’s comforting warmth as he propped his chin onto Yuuri’s shoulder. Everything fit like a glove, and for a moment it felt like maybe there was no war and life was good, and they had a chance. 

 

They both knew otherwise. Between them, under Viktor’s intricate kimono was layers upon layers of gauze dressing and tonic to keep him from completely spilling and seeping out into his clothes and onto the soil like the poor boy Yuuri had to tend to many months ago right as the epidemic started halfway through the trek to Sekigahara. 

 

Yuuri chose not to respond to Viktor’s flurry of questions knowing that he wouldn’t hear the end of it. When Yuuri was escorted by his unit leader two seasons ago into the foreign general’s private chambers, Viktor was sipping some sort of tea whilst looking over what looked like strategic plans. Yuuri wasn’t sure, all his focus was on the man who looked up and with a small smile, regarded him with a, “Welcome, Katsuki-san.”

 

Looking at where they were now, the old surname and honorific combo seemed like such an impersonal way to address each other. Viktor liked using those words on him every now and then to annoy Yuuri, and to be honest he’d be fine with it on any random day, but tonight was different. 

 

The events of the following hours would dictate the rest of their future. Would Yuuri survive long enough to see the sunrise? Would Viktor not have bled all over the ground before everyone ceased fire? Would they be lucky enough to find each other in an embrace like this after first daybreak strikes?

 

Yuuri could not afford to lose any more time with what could be the best thing that has ever happened to him. Maybe this is why he never found the strength to pack his bags and leave, no matter how easy it was. He knew that right here — in the dead of the night, under the fluttering of white war flags, in Viktor’s embrace, is where he was supposed to be. 

 

Viktor started humming a familiar tune, his timbre reverberating from his throat to the whole of Yuuri’s body where they connected. Viktor swayed them together slowly from side to side, and somewhere in the middle, Yuuri started to sing out the simple lyrics that came with the melody. 

 

“My my, Yuuri you never told me you were such a singer,” Viktor teased. 

 

“You never asked,” Yuuri can’t fathom how Viktor could stand being so jovial at such a trying time as this. But it seems just about right, since Viktor never exactly took anything seriously. With that thought, he brought his hands up to where the silver haired man’s own were wrapped around his midriff, and held on for dear life. 

 

Viktor sensed the tension in Yuuri and started nuzzling his neck for comfort. Yuuri always got worked up about even tiniest, most insignificant things, but Viktor knows what’s to come is neither tiny nor insignificant. 

 

“Yuuri,” Viktor received no response.

 

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he tried again. 

 

Yuuri took a deep breath and kept mum for quite a bit more, staring into the red flags across the field as if it would solve everything. Tears were welling up his eyes as he tried to will them away to no avail.

 

“In another life,” Yuuri started, his voice barely a whisper. 

 

“I hope I find you again.” 

 

Viktor loosens his grip, and for a second Yuuri swore he could hear his soul breaking, before Viktor turned him around by the shoulders and held his face in his hands. Yuuri let out a tired sigh of relief  at the sight of Viktor’s face, soft and smiling in the pale moonlight. 

 

“I hope I find you again, and the world has a place for us.” Yuuri’s tears fall, but Viktor wipes them away with his thumb. They have never talked of such matters before, and before he knew it, Viktor had tears running down his face as well. 

 

“Maybe in that life, fate wouldn’t be so cruel,” he continued. “We’d have more than just a couple of months. We’d have years, Viktor!” Yuuri’s eyes crinkled as he both smiled and sobbed at the possibility. 

 

“We’d have more than that, Yuuri.” Viktor’s voice cracked at the sob threatening at this throat. He leaned closer to press their foreheads together, and he didn’t know whose tears were whose. “We’d have decades, centuries. We’d be together forever,” Viktor prayed. “I promise, forever will make sense.”

 

Yuuri closed his eyes and tried his best to smile, thinking of all the lives they could live. _Just not this one, please._ But he couldn’t, he couldn’t stop the sobs wracking up his body. He laid his head on Viktor’s chest and Viktor held him tight as he tried to be strong for the both of them. 

 

Viktor looked up to stop his tears from falling, but his eyes widened. 

 

The sky was lighting up. Dawn was breaking, and time was running short. 

 

Yuuri gaze had followed suit, and he looked up before Viktor could stop him. The smaller man gaped at the light filtering in the crevices between the clouds. As if the gods themselves were staring them down, Yuuri broke free from Viktor’s grasp to scream at the sky. 

 

“No!” Whatever reservation Yuuri had before had been stripped down from him, his sobs were loud and clear, his tears hot and heavy. “I’m not asking for decades! Not centuries! I just want more time!” He screamed, but the sky only continued to open. “Please make it stop!” His knees gave out and he landed on the grass with a hard thud. 

 

There was nothing Viktor could to to placate the wounds of fate that had inflicted themselves on Yuuri. It hurt him so much to see Yuuri cry and curse at the wind that he hadn’t noticed his own bleeding. 

 

It does’t matter now, he thought as he crouched down to where Yuuri sat sobbing on the ground. 

 

They both knew they were fighting a losing battle from day one. And when the horns were blown and the army rose up from their little cots and hammocks, Yuuri was back in his tent — lifeless as a rock. His eyes were swollen and he hadn’t slept enough for any proper battle. He knew this battle would unify the country completely for the first time since its conception, and it wouldn’t be under white flags. 

 

When this is over, red flags of the future Tokugawa shogunate would be waving in the air. And what was left of the white banners that Yuuri spent many years defending would be waving in the scarlet of his blood. Viktor would have completely bled out at about the same time, but not before he sent out orders to boycott the arrogant Ishida and fight alongside the Tokugawa army. 

 

They both knew they were in too deep before they realized that only an eastern victory was proper for the betterment of the land of the rising sun. 

 

In many ways, they were flawed. But if their prayers miraculously didn’t fall on deaf ears, perhaps there’s a next time to make up for it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> This is my first time writing fan fiction since I was 11, and as far as I know, my writing abilities probably haven't improved since then. So please, if you have any sort of feedback, I would love to hear it. There's always room for improvement, especially for someone starting out like me.
> 
> In any case, In a Crowd of Thousands is a three part series about how Yuuri and Viktor find each other in different settings in history. Yes, the title is from the Anastasia the Musical score, and I absolutely love it asiefkjalskdfjaldskjfs;kakdsjfla
> 
> This particular chapter was based on the Battle of Sekigahara which is considered the greatest samurai battle of all time with about 160,000 samurai warriors battling it out in the Gifu Prefecture. It was the battle that brought peace to Japan for years on end under the Tokugawa government. It may not be 100% accurate, but I've included some uncanny parallels.
> 
> I really hope you guys liked it, and kudos are well appreciated.
> 
> Please talk to me! I'm on [tumblr](%E2%80%9Dst-saturnine.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)!  
> (Life is hard at the moment, so please consider buying me a [coffee](%E2%80%9Dko-fi.com/whitenoisce%E2%80%9D). Thank you!)


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